"Comically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the next morning in sorting over his miscellaneous luggage. In the light of Cape Town and the practical advice which had been his for the asking, his outfit appeared comically complete. Two thirds of it must be stored in Cape Town; of the other third, one full half must be left with the negro servants at the hotel. His toilet fixtures would have been adequate for a Paris season; his superfluous rugs would have warmed him during a winter on the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... was visible, having her seat in a balcony on the first story, and Madame Pfeiffer and her attendants stood in a row in the courtyard opposite to her. Under the balcony some soldiers were going through various evolutions, which terminated, comically enough, in a sudden lifting up of the right foot as if it had ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... multitude of books. The novels more particularly of the nineteenth century, if one excludes the mere story-tellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy realisation of changes that call for effort and of the lack of that effort. In a thousand aspects, now tragically, now comically, now with a funny affectation of divine detachment, a countless host of witnesses tell their story of lives fretting between dreams and limitations. Now one laughs, now one weeps, now one reads with ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... her and raised to Vanderbank, when she had ceased, the eyes he had attached to the carpet while she talked. "And must I go now?" Explanations, she had said, spoiled things, but he might have been a stranger at an Eastern court—comically helpless without his interpreter. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... once repaired to the carriage, in which he took a seat with the three gentlemen of the committee, leaving me to pick my way as best I could, and drove away for the hotel, (followed at a respectful distance by the loquacious alderman, thus comically mounted,) with this strange string of cattle. And this wonderful cortge was followed by scores of hooting and ragged urchins, who switched old Battle's gambrels, and annoyed him in so many ways, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... went gleaming out before the white shoulders of Mrs. Makely shone beside my black ones. I have now become so used to these observances that they no longer affect me as they once did, and as I suppose my account of them must affect you, painfully, comically. But I have always the sense of having a part in amateur theatricals, and I do not see how the Americans can fail to have the same sense, for there is nothing spontaneous in them, and nothing that has grown even dramatically out of ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... his companion whether this life of innocence, or that which men live at present, is the better of the two. He wants to distinguish between the mere animal life of innocence, the 'city of pigs,' as it is comically termed by Glaucon in the Republic, and the higher life of reason and philosophy. But as no one can determine the state of man in the world before the Fall, 'the question must remain unanswered.' Similar questions have occupied the minds of theologians ...
— Statesman • Plato
... so cheerful, so comically cross with all mankind. Mrs. Gunilla and he shouted as if desperate against each other. The company rose from the supper-table in full strife, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... I've got one for him," said Molly Wood, joining us. She stood on tiptoe and spoke it comically in our ears. "'I said in my haste, All men are liars.'" This made us merry as we stood among the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... the room, you'll never do that," said the gentleman, spying comically at him from where he still stood on the hearth, as the boy ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... plausibility to my picture of society when I got him into it. I lacked the touch of the literary diner-out; and I had, as the reader will probably find to his cost, the classical tradition which makes all the persons in a novel, except the comically vernacular ones, or the speakers of phonetically spelt dialect, utter themselves in the formal phrases and studied syntax of eighteenth century rhetoric. In short, I wrote in the style of Scott and Dickens; and as fashionable society then spoke ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... long wool; while two or three others fastened themselves about her neck and shoulders. It was a most singular sight to see the little creatures holding on with "tails, teeth, and toe-nails," while some peeped comically out of the great breast-pocket.' Burdened in this way, she climbed the tree, and then taking hold of the young 'possums, one by one, with her mouth, she made them twist their tails round a branch, and hang with their heads downwards. 'Five or six of the "kittens" were still ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... superiority, but Mellicent prattled on unperturbed, being a plump, placid person, with flaxen hair, blue eyes, and somewhat obtuse sensibilities. The elder girl was sitting reading by the window, leaning her head on her hand, and showing a long, thin face, comically like her father's, with the same deep lines running down her cheeks. She was neither so pretty nor so even-tempered as her sister, but she had twice the character, and was a young person who made her individuality ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... old friends and relatives, with a full account of my new home. Rather a comically-expressed account too, I fancy, from the bits Uncle Buller used to quote in after years. I got charming letters from him, piquant with his dry humour, and full of affection. Matilda generally added a note also; and Aunt Theresa always sent love and kisses ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... meaning by little and little, said to the man, "Heb is a preposition, I believe, Sir, is it not?" My countryman recovering some spirits upon the sudden question, cried out, "So I humbly presume, Sir," very comically.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 238. The Welsh words, which are the Myddelton motto, mean, 'Without God, without all. God is all-sufficient.' Piozzi ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... is gone to the mirror, and is arranging the finest auburn hair in the world in the most tasteful manner. The little lady watches every motion as comically as a kitten watches ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to be questioned. So I think that we must simply take it as it is, accepting Wagner's creed for the moment as a necessary convention. At the same time let us realize that it is an illogical development of the drama and not, as the Wagnerites comically insist, the symbol of an eternal verity. Allowing for the time occupied in mediaeval days by the journey from Rome to the heart of Germany, the pope's staff must have burst into leaf and flower long, long before Elisabeth's death. While she was waiting for Tannhaeuser ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... country-folk to whom they had appealed for help, and of the uncourteous reception they had met with in the Cardiff docks. Poor Meneghino reached London barefooted, his faithful canvas bag hanging disconsolately over his shoulder—and all with woefully vacant stomachs. They formed a comically dismal group as they collapsed into the office ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... progress of as many homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... see whether mountains are plum-colored or not, you'd better take somebody along who knows that a carrot-weed's a flower, and that stumps and stones are stumps and stones. You'd better take a person—like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty—"who won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except inside of your ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... eyes): True! (In a comically loud voice): Sister! come here! (The sister glides up to him): Ha! ha! What? Those bright eyes Bent ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... no wise intended as a burlesque, or caricature, of the style at the original, (but rather as a conscientious imitation of it, so far as practicable,) the Adapter has not allowed himself that license of humor which, in the most comically effective treatment of said Chapter, might bear the appearance of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... have an Arundel family portrait painted for him by Rubens. The Earl was rather given to having Arundel family portraits, for there are no less than three in which he figures. One by Van Somer, in which the hero is pointing somewhat comically with his truncheon to the statues of his collection in the background, and the last one projected by Van Dyck, but executed by an inferior artist, in which various family pieces of armour, swords, and shields, worn at Flodden, or belonging to the poet Earl of Surrey, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... contrast with Belle she had her mother's fairness and delicacy of feature, and her blue eyes were not designed to express the exultation and pride of one of society's flattered favorites. Indeed it was already evident that a glance from Arnold was worth more than the world's homage. And yet it was comically pathetic—as it ever is—to see how the girl tried to hide ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... girls," Hal said, waving his hand comically, like a duke in a comic opera. "Run along, little girls, run along," he said, rolling his r's in real stage fashion, and holding the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... rescuers came out of the woods at last and into the circle of firelight. On the shoulders of the two leaders sat Tyrker, his little eyes dancing with excitement, his thin voice squeaking comically in his attempts to pipe a German drinking-song, as he beat time with some little dark object which he was flourishing. The chief walked behind him with a face that was not only clear but almost radiant. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... down was made easy for him by the friendly character of his immediate superior—the chief. Powell could not defend himself from some sympathy for that thick, bald man, comically shaped, with his crimson complexion and something pathetic in the rolling of his very movable black eyes in an apparently immovable head, who was so tactfully ready to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Balzac, and here handled with characteristic deftness. We notice, also, a distinct improvement in workmanship. Scenes move more easily; dramatic values become coherent; characters stand out from the "chorus" on the stage. Pamela is a flesh-and-blood girl; Jules is real; Joseph is comically individual; Dupre is almost a strong creation, and nearly every one of ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... ladies who pass with a curious steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces comically anglicized by leg-of- mutton whiskers. The truth is, the lasagnone does not flourish in the best caffe; he comes to perfection in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich. It often happens that a glass of water, flavored with a little anisette, is the order over which ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... conception of Edgar Poe's, or some fantasy of Hoffmann, while the startled birds flew back to heaven, the moon split herself back to her ears, and the stars giggled behind their cloud-fans." The planetary system only revolved to frisky rhythms, and the earth herself, like a mad top, hummed comically about the horrified sun. En avant la musique! and the old edifice crumbled in dust around the musician. To Bergerat Offenbach was the great disillusioner of the age, the incarnation of what he conceived to be the spirit of the nineteenth century, a spirit that hated and contemned the past, mocked ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... poem of my friend was a voucher for this remark. At a great sledging-party, an awkward man has assigned to him a lady who does not like him: comically enough, there befalls him, one after another, every accident that can happen on such an occasion, until at last, as he is entreating for the sledge-driver's right (a kiss), he falls from the back-seat; for just then, as was natural, the Fates tripped him up. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... security. Hence, I speak it without concealment, I ask you to render me a dangerous and delicate service; dangerous because you may run the hazard of your lives, and delicate because I must ask an absolute discretion upon all that you shall see or hear. From an utter stranger the request is almost comically extravagant; I am well aware of this; and I would add at once, if there be any one present who has heard enough, if there be one among the party who recoils from a dangerous confidence and a piece of Quixotic devotion to he knows not whom - here is my hand ready, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smaller articles of personal belonging, hastily dumped from the duffel-bag, gradually disappeared from view in the manner of Pompeii and ancient Vesuvius. Dick burned his fingers and stumbled about and swore, and looked so comically-pathetically red-faced through the smoke that I, seated on the log, at the same time laughed and pitied. And in the end, when he needed a continuous steady fire to fry his cakes, he suddenly discovered that dry twigs do ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... saint, that he fully comprehended the prodigious powers of the holy personage he had ventured to chaff. In spite of his howls and frantic efforts to escape, the iron shoe is remorselessly fitted, and nail after nail driven into the quick. Imagine the sufferings of that poor devil; observe his comically distorted countenance as he bellows with agony and impotent rage; how his tail curls round his leg in the extremity of his anguish! The worst perhaps has to follow, for in spite of the agony of his crippled hoof, a deed will have to be "signed, sealed, and delivered," ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... sailors gathered them all together in one lot, when they inspected one another funnily; twisting about their throats, to be seen under all aspects. They comically waddled about like so many lame people, or suddenly started off in a great hurry for some unknown destination; and some fell down in their excitement. And there were monkeys, learning tricks of all kinds, another source of amusement. Some were most tenderly loved and even kissed extravagantly, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... speech and motion added to the pink tights made him comically frog-like, and even the abattis of medals on his breast could not save ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... For example, all things being equal, for six stammerers in Paris there would be twenty-five in Lyons and seventy in Marseilles. The admitted garrulity or fluency of southern speaking is often the cause or the preface to stammering. Thus, comically concludes M. Claretie, oratorical habits threaten to make stammering become the order of the day, and for one Vergniaud there will be ten stutterers, and ten more stutterers for one General Foy. Nevertheless, in earlier days, Camille Desmoulins stammered, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... effect of the pregnant pause. The listener, who had sobered wonderfully, sat gazing at her, his blue eyes comically rueful. ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... his pretty neck; he was perfectly delightful; he was charmingly naughty. There was not an atom of vice in that performance; no savage baring of teeth and laying back of ears. On the contrary, he pricked them forward in a comically aggressive manner. He was totally unmoral and lovable; I would have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots. But life is a stern thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I steeled my heart, and from my elevated position on the bridge I ordered the men ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... a fat boy with a comical face. At one of the rehearsals he sat in a boat and reached out for something. In doing this he fell overboard. He fell so comically that Belasco made his fall a part of the regular business. His ability got him a few lines, which were taken from another actor. This fat-faced, comical boy was John Bunny, who became the best-known moving-picture star in the United States, and who to the end of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... event it almost invariably appears as an abnormal incident in the life of a normal man. Shelley's life, on the other hand, is largely a concentration of abnormal incidents. He was habitually "a bit above himself." In the above incident he may have been consciously behaving comically. But many of his serious actions were quite as ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... becomes a different being. His quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of life—you wonder that you ever thought it heavy or commonplace. Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... will be quite satisfied with a girl, and so am I. Of course she will be a beauty, my dear little baby!" And with a deeper mother-love piercing through her childish pleasure, she bent over the infant; then took it up, awkwardly and comically enough, as though it were a toy she was afraid of breaking, and rocked it to and fro ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... his gnarled knuckles gave his puffy eyes a rub. Then he raised himself upon all-fours, and, crawling, much dishevelled with sleep, out of the watchman's hut, snuffed the air (a process in which his movements approximated comically to those of a keen-nosed watch-dog). Finally he rose to his feet, and, in the act, shook one of the trees so violently as to cause a bough to shed its burden of ripe fruit, and disperse the apples hither and thither over the dry ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... comically alarmed in the ring of his tone—as of a naughty schoolboy detected in a piece of mischief—that, propriety to the contrary notwithstanding, Elma couldn't for the life of her repress a smile. She looked down at the ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... excellently drawn and composed by French artists from Gros downwards, but costumed in what is now perhaps the least tolerable style of dress even to the most catholic taste—that of the Empire in France and the Regency in England—and most comically "thought."[14] At first sight this might seem to be a disadvantage, as calling attention to, and aggravating, certain defects of the text itself. I found it just the reverse. One was slightly distracted from, and half inclined to make allowances for, Nelvil's performances in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to another, with an inexplicable look of business and consideration in her face, that contrasted comically with her quick movements and her general air of glee, she would take her stand in the middle of each one in turn, and wheeling round to get a swift panoramic view of outlook and capabilities, would end by a succession of mysterious and apparently ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... is most comically plain in the case of the thing called Art, and the people called Art Critics. It is obvious that an attractive landscape or a living face can only half express the holy cunning that has made them what they are. It is equally obvious that a landscape painter expresses ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... effort to shake off the sense of the operatic, to accept the thing as genuine. Ruskin contended (in that olla podrida called "Modern Painters") that the Swiss peasants do not really dance and sing happily in the market-place; and hence he argued—comically enough—that the money spent on the stage reproduction of their happiness should be spent in really promoting their happiness. With my Italian peasants I feel the opposite: that such excellent picturesque effects should not be wasted on mere reality, but should be turned ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips, and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me, red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... I can't stop!" Anstice's comically regretful tone made Chloe smile. "I shall have to go home and see my patients. And if I ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... indefatigable collector of books. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds every first day of the new year to buy new books." Unhappily, in 1623, his library was destroyed by fire, an accident serio-comically described in his witty poem, "An Execration upon Vulcan." Yet even now a book turns up from time to time in which is inscribed, in fair large Italian lettering, the name, Ben Jonson. With respect to Jonson's use of his material, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... have to!" he quickly declared. The prompt neat accent, however, his manner of disposing of her question, failed of real expression, as he himself the next moment intelligently, helplessly, almost comically saw—a failure pointed moreover by the laugh into which Milly was immediately startled. As a suggestion to her of a healing and uplifting passion it was in truth deficient; it wouldn't do as the communication of a force that should sweep them both away. And the beauty ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... one side and humbly saluted Judge Morse as he passed, then bore down upon the women who were vigorously discussing the all-absorbing topic. The old man walked out to the edge of the sidewalk, squinted his eyes and came slowly up to where the women stood, comically pointing his index finger at them: "Look yer," said he, "yuna ta'k too much!" raising his voice. "Yuna mouts g'wine ter git yuna inter trouble; hear me? Did yuna see Jedge Morse when he go by? Did yuna see 'im stop ter listen at you? Le' me tell yuna sumthin' right good." The old man shook his ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously- -one might almost ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Silk was the son of a London clergyman. He was a tall, spare young man, who was often met about the Temple, striding towards his offices or the library. He was comically careful not to say anything that might offend, and nervously concerned to retreat from all persons and things which did not seem to him to offer possibilities of future help; and his assumed geniality and good-fellowship ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... ain't any. Looka this!" He turned up his foot, and you saw the bare sole, blackened and horrible, and fringed, comically, by the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... turned her sweet face up to mine with a doubtful expression, a comically wise look, and said, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... He unlocks maidenheads with his language, and speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as heartily. His discourse makes not his behaviour; but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin Lane. He is somewhat like the salamander, and lives in the flame of love, which pains he expresseth comically. And nothing grieves him so much as the want of a poet to make an issue in his love. Yet he sighs sweetly and speaks lamentably, for his breath is perfumed and his words are wind. He is best in season at Christmas, for the boar's head and reveller ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of disquietude in this communication to his old friend are distinctly pathetic. In parts he is comically peevish and decidedly restrained. He mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... it the comically serious way in which she made this confession of virtue. For her part, she felt at once that she ought to have expressed herself differently, and so she ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... illustration: The greater part of the second act of "Die Meistersinger" is taken up with Beckmesser's serenade, comically interrupted by the songs and the hammering of Hans Sachs the cobbler. Toward the end the apprentice David sees Beckmesser, and imagining he is serenading his sweetheart, assaults and beats him most unmercifully. The noise attracts the neighbors, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... and which was suggested, doubtless, by the English anthems. It spread through the choirs of colonial villages and towns like wild-fire, and was called "fuguing." Mr. Billings' "Fuguing Psalm Singer" was published in 1770. It is a dingy, ill-printed book with a comically illustrated frontispiece, long pages of instruction, and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... worry. I'll be first in line, and if the other gang should be at my heels I'll slip you over a bunch of dummies, to throw 'em off the scent, and you can hand me back the receipts for the real thing." He winked comically and went out ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... was fairly colossal. The reforms in legislation for Ireland were, in her estimation, owing to her novel of Florence Macarthy. She professed to have taught Taglioni the Irish jig: of her toilette, made largely by her own hands, she was comically vain. In The Fraserians, a charming off-hand description of the contributors to that magazine, Lady Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet before a mirror with a funny mixture of satisfaction and anxiety as to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... This done, she refolded the handkerchief with its soiled side innermost, and tied it neatly round the wounded head, leaving two long ends which stood up like rabbit's ears. A gust of April wind wagged them comically, and made mock of the sorrowful, grubby face underneath. Even Frances, who was only nine herself, must have seen that the sorrow was not the ordinary childish thing that came and went, leaving no trace. In a way ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... and would repeat the end of one sentence four times before going on to the next. She shook her head as she recited her part; her hair-pins fell down and all over the room. When she could not recollect sometimes some word she was as impatient as a naughty child; sometimes she swore comically or she would use big words;—one word with which she apostrophized herself was very big and very short. Christophe was astonished by the mixture of talent and childishness in her. She would produce moving tones of voice quite aptly, but in the middle of a speech into which she seemed ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... eyes off an industrious water-hen, who was building a nest in a hurried way, as though she were not quite sure of his intentions, and perceived a large raven standing on one leg on the grass, about three yards from him, and peering at him comically out of one eye. This was odd. But his glance did not stop at the raven, for a yard or two beyond it he caught sight of a white skirt, and his eyes, travelling upwards, saw first a rounded waist, and then ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... and then they began, with the air played slowly out of time—a most feeble performance—right to the end of the strain, when the lieutenant lowered his flute, and looked at his master with a rather pitiful, but comically perplexed, expression. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... in her naughtiness. It was left to an abnormal critic like George Gissing to point out the glaring fact that in the remarkable set of life studies of XIXth century women to be found in the novels of Dickens, the most convincingly real ones are either vilely unamiable or comically contemptible; whilst his attempts to manufacture admirable heroines by idealizations of home-bred womanhood are not only absurd but not even pleasantly absurd: one has no ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... are going up in London! They'd give you a start, and no mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in a comically naive tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by bit! Now, if it hadn't been for Sarah—and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... a comically resigned air—"I shall never be of sufficient importance for that! No one would waste a penny stamp on me! All I can ever hope to win is the unanimous abuse of the press. That will at least give me ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Roger comically, in imitation of the captain's own air of concession, "since you feel so warmly on the subject, I'm quite willing to yield the point. It's enough that Lathrop should read it before he signs." Then, turning to me suddenly, he cried, "Ben, what's the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... was not successful; Natalie continued looking charmingly blank. Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Farther off, a pall of red vapour veiled the gallop of the last horsemen wheeling away toward Rabat. The vapour subsided, and moving out of it we discerned a slow procession. First rode a detachment of the Black Guard, mounted on black horses, and, comically fierce in their British scarlet and Meccan green, a uniform invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century by a retired English army officer. After the Guard came the standard-bearers and the great dignitaries, then the Sultan, still aloof, immovable, as if rapt in the contemplation of his ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... me as you see, sir—but it's good to suffer in this world, especially for the thruth. Indeed I am proud of this face," he continued, blinking with a visage so comically disastrous at Mr. Lucre, that had that gentleman had the slightest possible perception of the ludicrous in his composition, not all the gifts and graces that ever were poured down upon the whole staff of the Reformation ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... simple, kind-hearted, and truly religious. In addition to all, he is a considerable bit of a humorist; when the good man's mind is easy, his humor is kindly, rich, and mellow; but, when any way in dudgeon, it is comically sarcastic." ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... useless struggle? Think of Demosthenes, who for thirty years delivered speeches against the Macedonian, and warned his countrymen, who would not listen to him! The gods were with the Macedonian, and condemned Hellas to be overthrown. Demosthenes was imprisoned. Comically enough, he was accused of having been bribed by the same Macedonian. That was, of course, a lie. This patriot who sacrificed himself for the salvation of his fatherland, who believed he was fighting on the gods' side, had to take poison, and fell, fighting ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... least twenty others were crowded, was a designer of patterns for weaving; she had too the gift which had characterized her heathen ancestors, of representing faces in profile, with a few simple lines, in such a way that, though often comically distorted, they were easily recognizable. She was executing these works of art on a wax tablet with a copper stylus, and the others were to guess for whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... muzzle of my gun, which was loaded with an enormous charge of shot, is undeniable; but this did not lessen my exultation a whit. The sparrows I used to kill in days of yore, with inexpressible delight, grew "small by degrees" and comically less before the plump inhabitant of the marshes, till they dwindled into nothing; and the joy and fuss with which I hailed the destruction of the unfortunate bird can only be compared to, and equalled by, the crowing and flurry with which ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... than the genuine Greek national poetry, and which, if they were not quite so venerable as the Iliad, possessed at any rate an age sufficiently respectable to pass as classics with schoolmasters. The love-poems of Euphorion, the "Causes" of Callimachus and his "Ibis," the comically obscure "Alexandra" of Lycophron contained in rich abundance rare vocables (-glossae-) suitable for being extracted and interpreted, sentences laboriously involved and difficult of analysis, prolix digressions full of mystic combinations ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the temptation to add the comically bombastic Dedication of these Sonatas to the Elector, which may very possibly have been written by Neefe, who loved to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... written during his seventh or eighth year. It was soon discovered that he could improvise on the piano; indeed he could sketch the disposition of his companions by certain figures on the piano, so exactly and comically that every one burst out laughing at the portraits. He was fond of reading too, much to his father's delight, and early tried his hand at authorship. He wrote robber plays, which he staged with the aid of the family and such of ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... a closer touch of her hand, he looked comically up. Her head moved, ever so slightly, towards him. He dropped his eyeglass with a smart click and kissed her cheek. She shivered, and started back. A blank dismay fell upon her; her heart seemed to stop. Good Heavens! Not so, not at all so, had James kissed ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... could have been amusing only to one whose intimate knowledge of her found it characteristically salt; for she was a lady of speech addressed ever directly or roundabout to the chief point of business between herself and her hearer, and the more she was brief, oblique, far-shooting, the more comically intelligible she was to her niece. She bent her head to signify that she had seen the secretary, and struck the table ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man was with them intermittently. A rather "touristy" friend of his took him away at times. He complained comically to Miss Winchelsea. "I have only two short weeks in Rome," he said, "and my friend Leonard wants to spend a whole day at Tivoli looking ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... charter to hoodwink the public. Loaves of six pounds' weight, cut in four quarters, made good the promise of "bread at discretion." Such was the plenty of the establishment, that Moliere would have celebrated it if it had been in existence in his day, so comically appropriate is the name. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... actor; and again she would grow pale, and her breath come quick and short, as her fancy portrayed him—when in the darkness he could not have been seen by human eyes—far out amid the ice upon the river. Then again her face would grow comically pitiful, as she murmured: "I could have brought him to quicker than uncle. I could have given him a stimulant more potent than the forty-year-old brandy of which uncle is so proud. I've found ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... 'Well!' said he comically, 'it is said that no man knows himself—how it may be with women I can't say!' And he made over the sketch in his hand and went to his former work; which ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... at White's. Davy Roberts's pretty little daughter is there for a week, with her husband, Bicknell's son. There was a dinner first to say good-bye to Danby, who goes to other clergyman's-duty, and we were very merry. Mrs. White unchanging; White comically various in his moods. Talfourd comes down next Tuesday, and we think of going over to Ryde on Monday, visiting the play, sleeping there (I don't mean at the play), and bringing the Judge back. Browne is coming down when he has done his month's ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Yet we are asked to believe that an Eskimo could be so enamoured of the beauty of a few simple lines tattooed on a girl's dirty face that he would refuse to marry her unless she had them! Like other champions of the sexual selection theory, Grosse searches in the clouds for a comically impossible motive when the real reason lies right before his eyes. That reason is fashion. The tattoo marks are tribal signs (Bancroft, I., 48) which every girl must submit to have in obedience to inexorable custom, unless she ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... as poetry. Allison, for instance, and Wilson would be different men if only they would read my works! I'm not sure even if I may say so, that Remenham himself wouldn't be the better." Remenham, however, smilingly indicated that he had read them. Whereat Coryat rather comically remarked, "Oh, well! Yes! Perhaps then my poetry isn't quite good enough. But there's Shakespeare, and Milton, and—I don't care who it is, so long as it has the essential of all great poetry, and that is to make you feel the worth of things. I don't mean by that the happiness, but just ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... within him strange things took place. It was literally true that his impression began again, after a lull, to make him nervous and anxious, and for reasons peculiarly confused, almost grotesquely mingled, or at least comically sharp. He was distinctly an agitation and a new taste—that he could see; and he saw quite as much therefore the excitement she already drew from the vision of Addie, an image intensified by the sense of closer kinship and presented to her, clearly, with various ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... was more than the best of company and the loveliest of objects; she was at once comrade and counsellor. He depended upon her more than upon any one. Comically helpless as he often found himself, he asked her advice about everything, and always received ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... underwear. Time was when that would have raised a howl of joy, but no longer. She hardly touches the ground when we find ourselves gazing at an orchard of California figs, zip, the woman picks herself up, gazes comically at the audience for a laugh and receiving none, hops with phenomenal agility up astride of the hood of the auto, piff, a yard of Santa Rosa hens, ping, the husband throws his wife up to the roof of a skyscraper, the commuters gaze solemnly, ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... one's powers of description. We rode part of the way through an open forest, many of whose trees were of great height. One of these had, on a single large branch thrust out from the trunk at a height of sixty feet or so, as many bird's-nest ferns as could crowd upon it, looking comically like a row of hens roosting for the night. From the ground, about fifteen feet from the root of this same tree, rose a single-stem liana, joining the main trunk at the branch just mentioned; to this liana a huge bird-nest ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... to blush!" cried the Major, comically hiding his face behind Betty's fan. "But all this time you have never told me ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manner, and in a tone comically like Ethelinda's, Mary answered, "You may. Miss Lewis gave me that bit of information, and for the rest I looked her up in Burke's Peerage. She comes of a very illustrious and noble family, so of course she feels perfectly ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... turning to the right entered the big sitting room. Its lone occupant sat up with a jerk, wiping the drowsiness out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He had been taking a cat nap on his ancient sofa; his long white back hair was tousled up comically behind his bald ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... lying on the floor. His thick black eyebrows were knitted by a frown, while he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. And their sideways glance in conjunction with the hooked nose, the whole bulky, ungainly, sprawling person, struck Freya as so comically moody that, inwardly discomposed as she was, she could not help smiling. She did her best to give that smile a conciliatory character. She did not want to ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... him. It was that a Radical Prime Minister and a Conservative working man should change into each other by supernatural means, and the working man be confronted with the problem of governing, while the Prime Minister should be as comically out of place in the East End environment. He thought it would make a funny "Arabian Nights" sort of burlesque. And so it would have done; but, unfortunately, I saw subtler possibilities of political satire in it. I insisted the story must be real, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... grovelling under the wires, making frantic efforts to reach a baby bottle of whisky that had rolled from within the marrow away beyond the fence. "Cognac!" he gasped, as he struggled, and then, as shouts greeted his speedy success, he sat up, adding comically: "My word! Me close up smash him Cognac." At the thought came his inevitable laughter, and as he leant against the fence post, surrounded by the shattered marrow, he sat hopelessly gurgling, and choking, and shaking, and hugging his bottle, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... yard office looked up from his standing-desk, lifting, to the light of the open door a red monkey-face comically fringed with coppery whiskers, and stared at him ferociously with little stone-blue eyes. He listened in fierce stillness while Waters put forward his request to ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... that we should give careful and intelligent consideration to the selection of our millinery that the ugly lines in our otherwise beautiful faces may not be at the mercy of mocking bunches of ribbons, comically tilted straws, or floppy bits ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... my animal couldn't talk, either," said Rinkitink, winking comically at Inga and then looking toward the cage. "He is very cross at times, and indulges in language that is not respectful. I thought, at first, it would be fine to have a talking goat, with whom I could converse as I rode about my city on ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... pretty face so comically in imitation of nurse's worried expression, and mimicked Aunt Catharine's lofty tones so cleverly, that Darby clapped his hands in delight and admiration. Then they raced each other along the breezy headland, across the sweet-smelling stubble field, through the stackyard ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... diminished by the fact that he detested her views and thought the whole business a poor perversity. He understood her now very well (since his visit to Cambridge); he saw she was honest and natural; she had queer, bad lecture-blood in her veins, and a comically false idea of the aptitude of little girls for conducting movements; but her enthusiasm was of the purest, her illusions had a fragrance, and so far as the mania for producing herself personally was concerned, it had been distilled into her by people ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... in research is undermining the credit of the Hebrew Scriptures, is a presumption almost comically at variance with fact. There is, in particular, one 'weapon of precision' which has of late been working wonders in precisely the opposite direction. That weapon is the spade. And what has it been unearthing? ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... "And I suspect he's so cross with me that he hates to keep this engagement. But I don't care. I wish I had a new dress. But I've made the sleeves small in my organdy and made a new girdle. It looks as well as could be expected!" she finished, comically. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... at him, waggled his stub of a tail, and darted down the slope to the left, now and then uttering a yelp. Scattered goats lifted heads to look, their jaws working comically sidewise as though they felt they must dispose of that particular mouthful before something happened to prevent. As Pat neared them, they scrambled away from him, running to the right, which was toward the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Carnegie medals, oughtn't we, girls?" said Julietta Hyde, blinking comically. "We can throttle anything from a black-hand ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... was introspective, vacant, his mouth was half open, and his tongue lolled out so comically that Dick almost laughed aloud. No one moved by so much as a hand's breadth. The bear dropped back to his cooling sand with a sigh of voluptuous pleasure. The canoes drew a ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... it with her plump little legs, and giving so vigorous a pull, that, long accustomed to be transplanted annually, it came up by the roots, and little Pansie came down in a sitting posture, making a broad impress on the soft earth. "See, see, Doctor!" cries Pansie, comically enough giving him his title of courtesy,—"look, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her sides, she exclaimed: "He shall not tell his story, father? He shall not? but it is my will. He shall! He shall in spite of you!" and thus saying she stamped her pretty little foot vehemently on the floor, but she did it all with such a comically graceful air that Huldbrand now felt his gaze almost more riveted upon her in her anger than before ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... These shoes are made out of a warm English cloth called duffle, and are in shape like a large mit without a thumb. An old dog that has once become accustomed to dog shoes, is ever hankering after them when on a long cold trip. Sometimes, they will come and most comically hold up their feet to be shod. At other times, they have been known to come into camp and there lie down on their backs, and, holding up their four feet, plead most ludicrously and importunately for these warm woollen shoes. Some of them get very cunning at their work, and shirk from doing their ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... knock me down again!" and Franz grinned comically and grotesquely upward, through the gap in his mouth where two of his teeth had been punched out earlier ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... businesslike and solid even my untrained eye could see. Many of the deck fittings seemed disproportionately substantial. The anchor-chain looked contemptuous of its charge; the binnacle with its compass was of a size and prominence almost comically impressive, and was, moreover the only piece of brass which was burnished and showed traces of reverent care. Two huge coils of stout and dingy warp lay just abaft the mainmast, and summed up the weather-beaten aspect of the little ship. I should ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... fountain of such learning, after his banishment. Boccaccio indeed says that he did not return to Italy till 1311. Wegele (Dante's "Leben und Werke," p. 85) puts the date of his journey between 1292 and 1297. Ozanam, with a pathos comically touching to the academic soul, laments that poverty compelled him to leave the university without the degree he had so justly earned. He consoles himself with the thought that "there remained to him ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... where they were, took one berry daintily in the tip of his beak, returned with it to the upper perch, fixed his eyes upon me, and suddenly, without a movement, let it slip down his throat, his eyes still upon me, with the most comically solemn expression of "Who says I swallowed a berry?" Then he stood with an air of defiant innocence, as if it were a crime to eat berries, not wiping his bill nor moving a feather till he wanted another berry, when he ate it in ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... legs; and I believe it's because I let other folks get along—tit for tat, you see. A fellow who is for ever putting his hindering spoke in the wheel of others, is safe to get hindering spokes put into his. I am not a pattern model," comically added John Massingbird; "but I have never done wilful injury to others, and my worst enemy (if I possess one) can't charge it ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood |
